Musings of a Canadian liberal woman about the state of Canadian and US politics.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Assassination Politics

That Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated in a possible Mossad operation in a Dubai hotel in January seems to be secondary to the diplomatic flap that has arisen as a result of the 11 suspected murderers using fake passports.

INTERPOL has issued Red Notices for assistance in identifying the suspects whom, one would think, someone somewhere by now would have recognized. Yet, there is silence.

While governments fight over who knew what when, the fact that this person was murdered - that he was accused of crimes for which he will now never be brought to actual justice through civilized means i.e. in a court of law - seems to have fallen by the wayside.

The Obama administration has acknowledged it’s [sic] continuing a Bush-era policy authorizing the killing of US citizens abroad. The confirmation came from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair in congressional testimony last week. Blair said, “Being a US citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.”

That a president who is a former constitutional law professor would support extrajudicial killings is absolutely appalling. Yet this news barely made a blip on the radar screen of your average citizen - no doubt because so many Americans believe that their rights ought to be happily surrendered because, after all, if they're not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Even Democrats and so-called progressives (who are busy these days relabeling themselves as "pragmatists" as they realize the "liberal" president they elected is, in fact, a conservative in progressives' clothing) who oft repeated Ben Franklin's quote about those who sacrifice liberty for a little security deserving neither during the Bush years as they watched in horror while their system of laws was being stripped to its bare bones - even those so-called "leftists" continue to support a president who has granted himself the power of a king: the right to determine who shall live and who shall die without even giving that person access to the most basic right - a fair trial.

How did it come to this? That the issue is not about whether murder by government is acceptable but that, in the case of al-Mabhouh and those who will be killed by US government fiat (that we'll most likely never hear about), the politics are the prime consideration?

2 comments:

It's also suspect that Dubai has Palestinian suspects in custody while, even though the Dubai airport authorities used retinal scans, the other suspects still remain free and unidentified. No doubt they've all been quickly serviced by plastic surgeons after they concluded their murderous version of Ocean's Eleven. (The "blonde" would be played by Julia Roberts.)

I almost wonder of this hit was meant as a provocation for Iran's government (which supports Hamas) to retaliate against Israel - thus giving it the right to claim "self-defence" when it strikes out against that country. Israel likes to set itself up as the victim in that way - as it did when it attacked Lebanon. But, this time, if Israel goes after Iran, the US government will be much more involved than it ever wanted to become in the most recent Israel/Lebanon war.

This is a great post. I just had one of the ‘Doh!’ moments and ran back to correct my own site before publishing my comment. You see my own comment form did not match what I’m about to advice. I get less comment than you, so never noticed any problem. I’ve changed it now anyway so here goes.